Commonwealth v. Miller’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 federal appellate · 71 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 75 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In those cases where a legitimate component of the defense to the charge of murder or the Commonwealth’s effort to obtain a sentence of death lies in demonstrating to the jury a claim concerning the defendant’s mental condition, expert psychiatric assistance may be indispensable. In such instances, I believe that it would be an abuse of discretion for the trial court to deny a request for funding, even though the request would not implicate federal constitutional due process concerns as interpreted by [Commonwealth v. Christy, 540 Pa. 192 , 656 A.2d 877 (1995) (plurality), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 872 , 116 S.Ct. 194 , 133 L.Ed.2d 130 (1995) ]. I would thus enforce as mandatory what the majority posits is permissive so that, as the trial court appropriately ensured in the present case, an indigent defendant is provided core resources necessary to present a full and fair defense in all phases of capital litigation.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Blakeney